


lucus a non lucendo

by sictransitgloriamundi



Series: from the desk of Courier Six, representative of the Sovereign City of New Vegas [3]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas, Il buono il brutto il cattivo | The Good The Bad and The Ugly (1966)
Genre: Astronomy, Camping, M/M, one (1) smooch, the truest human activity telling stories about stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 07:43:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19865974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sictransitgloriamundi/pseuds/sictransitgloriamundi
Summary: got the truly excellent prompt "I wish you would write a fic where the sad cowboys go stargazing and kiss in the dark and then awkwardly pretend it didn't happen :3" and syb's wish is my command





	lucus a non lucendo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sybilius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sybilius/gifts).



> do I know where this fits into the larger crossover? no. shut up and eat your dessert

Far and away from the lights of New Vegas, it was a dark and moonless night. Or it would have been, if the Milky Way like a bagful of spilled bottlecaps hadn’t been casting shadows on the ground. 

Blondie was sprawled out shirtless on top of the roof they’d picked, keeping half an eye on the road but mostly indulging in the cooler night air. They hadn’t seen another soul all day, and they’d camp cold tonight, but it never hurt to be too careful along a main road. 

Angel clambered up the ladder, closed the hatch down to the gas station, and sat next to him against the surviving parapet wall with a sigh, letting the heat of the day sink into his lower back. It was getting too hot to be running around during the day. 

“Beautiful.” Blondie heard him remark, and still staring at the Eagle rising over the mountains, hummed in agreement. 

He heard Angel light his pipe and tilted his head back to find him illuminated. He’d seen a series of paintings in a book, once, of an artist refining his lighting just so over the course of years, with the people’s faces always half-caught in a golden pool of light. He thought about these paintings every time he saw Angel smoking in the dark. 

Angel was looking down at him, struck by Blondie’s hair gilded in silver and gold from the stars and his pipe, then looked away at the road and the great splash of stars over the mountains. “Supposed to be a river of milk.” 

“No, it’s the leftovers from the Resource Wars. All the bullet casings.”

“Then why’s there a whole story going along with it being a river of milk?”

Blondie hrmmed encouragingly. 

‘The uh- the Summer Triangle?” Angel gestured toward the stars, drawing lines in the air. 

Blondie almost huffed. Every brat knew the Summer Triangle, and how it pointed to the Bear and the Cub, the last non-mutated bear who escaped with her cub to the sky when the bombs fell and pointed hunters home. 

“The top one’s a weaver man, and the right one’s a Brahmin herder.” A satellite helpfully sliced through the Triangle, hurrying north, and they watched it vanish over the foothills before Angel spoke again. 

“Families didn’t want ‘em together, so they dug a river to stop the herder seeing his love.” 

“Doesn’t seem a reasonable solution.” Blondie complained. “He’s a  _ Brahmin herder.  _ He’s got a sleipnir.”

“Pre-War people didn’t have sleipnirs.”

“How else would you herd Brahmin? Just dogs?” 

“The weaver and the Brahmin herder,” Angel continued, “they’re separated by the river, because the Brahmin herder needs to tend his herd and the weaver man needs to weave.” 

Blondie twisted around on one elbow to look at Angel properly and demanded “Well? Did he get the boy in the end?” 

“They get one night a year together,” Angel said, definitely not looking at Blondie sprawled out in silver-limned glory and attending to his pipe. 

Blondie dropped back down. “Which night is that?” he asked the weaver and the herder.

“Any night they want,” said Angel. 

Blondie sat up like a sleipnir getting up, all awkward joints. “Any night they want, huh?” 

“That’s how the story goes,” said Angel, definitely not staring at Blondie- where those narrow hips vanished into his jeans, a little sweaty and gross overall. 

“How’s ours go?” Blondie asked, sotto voce.

Angel cleared his throat with a terrible squeak. “Any way you want.” 

Blondie’s lips were so much softer than he thought they’d be. 

**Author's Note:**

> lucus a non lucendo- a nonsense phrase, saying that two things are related because they’re opposites. specifically, lūcus (“grove”) is derived from lūceō (“I shine”), because forests are dark. have you ever thought about how Blondie & Angel look like the moon and the sun because I sure have. a lot
> 
> I like to think I’m following the grand cinematic tradition of having Clint Eastwood be shirtless for no particular reason.
> 
> My fucking goddamn DREAM is to be in a place so dark the Milky Way casts shadows on the ground, but nowhere like that exists in the continental US because of light pollution. Hey kids make sure your outdoor light are pointed down and shielded and dimmer than they are now, bc light pollution affects your biological rhythms and also fucks up everything else in the ecosystem around you’s biological rhythms. Save the bees, save all the good night pollinating insects, save all your friendly neighborhood critters. There is absolutely no link between less crime and more light. 
> 
> Blondie saw a series of Rembrandt portraits. GOD I love a good lighting scheme in a painting  
> Satellites would absolutely not stay up for two hundred years, BUT, bits of satellite pieces could? Maybe? neither of them are astronomers and know what the fuck they’re looking at unlike Me, a Trained Astronomer
> 
> In Fallout 2, San Francisco is renamed Shi Town, and is controlled by the descendants of a Chinese sub that crashed there after the War. The Enclave’s oil rig isn’t very far off, so it’s likely that Angel heard the Weaver and the Cowherd legend when he was on the run after the oil rig exploded. He’s conflating it with the Greco-Roman “the Milky Way is actually milk” tale, I made it gay to suit my purposes. 
> 
> Sleipnirs are from tumblr user owligator and are horses with ENTIRELY too many legs. http://owligator.tumblr.com/post/171877885300/if-theres-one-thing-i-crave-whenever-i-play-new
> 
> Blondie, as ex-Legion with their Roman Legion cosplaying, would have heard retellings of the Greco-Roman myths. Retold to suit Caesar’s purpose, and with a heavy dollop of post-War superstition, because the Callisto myth is a fucking bummer and not great to tell to children. 
> 
> ad astra per aspera motherfuckers


End file.
